The Pakhan's Bitter Bride

She was supposed to be somebody else's payment. He made her his. Irina Sokolova does not remember the men who took her family. She remembers the bakery, the ovens, and the rent she almost cannot make. Lev Volkov is forty-four, patient, and the reason there is no Sokolov family left to remember. He has paid into a dead account for twenty years. When a rival tries to buy his penance as a bride, Lev does the only thing he knows how to do: he takes her first. Now Irina is married to the man who emptied her house before she could walk. She has his kitchen, his ledger, his name on her documents. What she does not have is an answer to the question she keeps asking: does he want her, or does he want to be forgiven? She is going to find out, and then she is going to charge him. The Pakhan's Bitter Bride is a forced marriage, age gap bratva romance with a heroine who takes the house and a hero who lets her.